CARES Learning Partnership is an Oakland-based impact organization that helps leaders, teams, schools, ministries, nonprofits, and community agencies build healthier cultures through behavioral wellness, restorative leadership, and strategic growth.
Why we exist
We exist because the people who serve others often carry invisible stress, unresolved conflict, and relational fatigue. CARES helps them recover clarity, build trust, and lead with Consideration.
What CARES means
Our Core Values:
CONSIDERATION
We believe consideration is identity formation and is defined by us as: The conscious regard for the needs, values, and dignity of others, especially when making decisions or taking action.
AGENCY
If each person makes positive changes in the portion of the world they live in and has the agency to impact change, then the world is indeed forever changed for the better. We build agency through awareness, acquisition, and application.
RESTORATION
Restoration is achieved through practice. The main principles of restorative practices are empowerment, honesty, respect, engagement, voluntarism, healing, restoration, personal accountability, inclusiveness, collaboration, and problem-solving. Restorative practices focus on how to work with (not to or for) a community to co-create and negotiate truth. RP values and prioritizes healthy and equitable relationships—how to form, maintain, and restore them after a conflict has occurred.
EDUCATION
We believe that learning is the work of a lifetime and that school is bigger than a classroom. Our most significant impact on education is through our continued support of school leaders. We provide strategic growth, culture, and climate development, as well as guided self-care, for leaders facing unique challenges.
SERVICE
Love is an action word. To love one’s life is to live a life of service to others. We provide specialized services in behavioral wellness, strategic growth, trust leadership, mediation, conflict resolution, restorative practices, and guided self-care.
Our Core Belief:
People are not problems to manage. People are whole human beings to understand, equip, and walk with.
Our culture change framework:
Awareness
AWARENESS – that there is a problem is the first step. We conduct assessments and deliver presentations and workshops to identify stressors and trauma faced individually and organizationally.
Acquisition
ACQUISITION – Acquisition of knowledge concerning the problem. After we know where we are, we now need to know how to move forward; the next step is to provide the tools needed for sustainable change.
Application
APPLICATION – The last step in our process consists of providing ongoing coaching in applying the newly acquired knowledge. In this step, we use relationships and opportunities, not presentations, to achieve results.
Our Impact Lens
